


If Your Dreams Do Not Scare You

by Maidenjedi



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Female Friendship, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 17:29:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18833365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maidenjedi/pseuds/Maidenjedi
Summary: Donna joins the Bartlet campaign, and meets a woman who helps change her life.





	If Your Dreams Do Not Scare You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raktajinos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raktajinos/gifts).



Donna clutched the i.d. badge Josh Lyman had given her, looking around as the campaign staff began closing up shop for the night.  She had a job – sort of – and was well on her way to starting her new life.  More or less. 

A new life.  Doing something she could be proud of, at the next family gathering.  Her mother had grilled her over Thanksgiving about school, about quitting, about _him_.  She got a passive-aggressive guilt trip about the money her folks had spent, the debt they’d taken on so she could go to school in the first place.  And then when Donna had approached her parents about this, about starting over and trying something new (again!), they shook their heads and told her to call if she needed them to come get her.

Less than half a tank of gas left.  A wallet with more receipts than cash.  She knew no one in New Hampshire except Josh Lyman, and she couldn’t exactly tell him she didn’t have a place to stay.  He knew that. 

It was just the one night.  They’d be on their way to South Carolina after this.  If he remembered, if she got to go.  She really would pay her way – but she’d have to get the money tomorrow.  The dealership would be closed but also, she was beginning to think the back seat might be the best place to spend the night.

Various staff called out their plans for the night.  Seemed like a few were going to a local bar, others were calling it and going to get some badly needed sleep.  A good-looking guy stood talking animatedly to a grizzled, mostly-bald middle-aged man – Sam Seaborn and Toby Ziegler.  Sam was probably approachable; she might even get a dinner out of it if she was sweet enough….

_A new life, Donnatella. A new one._

“Donna, right?”

She twirled around.  A tall red-headed woman was smiling kindly at her.  Ms...Craig?

“Yes, um, yeah.  I’m Donna.  Did you need anything?”

It was so automatic she didn’t even hear herself say it.

The woman smiled.  “I’m C.J. Cregg, I handle the press for the campaign.  Josh mentioned we had a newbie here, and I didn’t recognize you.  Would you like to join in, a few of us are going for beers?”

Donna gaped a little.  C.J. Cregg, that was it.  Donna had read about her, a few weeks back, a story about how she’d joined the Bartlet campaign despite a very lucrative career with a big promotions firm in Los Angeles.  It was a blurb, really, a side note about successful, stylish women in the winter fashion edition of Glamour. 

“I’m…well, honestly, I don’t really have…”

C.J.’s smile softened further.  “It’s okay, I’ll spot you.  You can owe me later.  It’s your first day, no reason to try and find your way around Nashua by yourself.  I _told_ Josh…but never mind.  Got everything?  Cool, let’s head out.”

And that was how Donna Moss met C.J. Cregg.

-

The first night, she’d crashed with C.J., who absolutely would not hear about Donna sleeping in her car.  Then, in South Carolina, when Donna realized this would be as far as she could reasonably go (selling her car had gotten her to South Carolina, but wouldn’t get her further), C.J. caught on and told her they could bunk together for the duration, or until Donna was on payroll.  Later when Donna was getting a nominal salary, C.J. told her to save it, and continued to keep Donna with her.

Donna really wondered how this had all come together, how it kept working.  By rights, people like Josh Lyman and C.J. Cregg should have turned a person like Donna Moss away.  She had no campaign experience, unless you counted her one ill-fated run for student council in the ninth grade.  She had no political credibility at all, being one of the youngest on the team and certainly the least educated.  She listened in awe to Governor Bartlet’s speeches – he was brilliant, and half of what he said Donna had to ask questions about later.  Josh explained some of it, bemused by Donna’s questions.  C.J. explained it all better, minus the bemusement, with something approaching zeal as she came to realize she had a potential protégé staying with her.

It took exactly one call home, to _him_ , for Donna to doubt.  What was she doing here?

She called him on a day that hadn’t gone particularly well.  Josh was sleep-deprived and yelled more than he spoke to anyone; C.J. was in the room with the governor hashing out some details and he couldn’t remember her name, making C.J. irritable whenever Donna saw her.  The phones rang constantly.  Toby Ziegler growled at two younger volunteers who were supposed to be helping with copy editing – both quit before the day was out.

Donna’s head pounded and she wanted to hear a friendly voice.  She didn’t want to call her parents – her mother was still calling this whole campaign thing “your break” and refused to hear stories or entertain Donna’s gushing.  She’d had a beer, everyone was gruff and kind of ignoring her, so she called him.

And she cried.  He told her he’d been wrong, and maybe she should come home, wasn’t it time?  “The campaign – I mean, Donna, politics hasn’t ever been your thing.  I miss you.”

She was just in the right frame of mind for it to work.  So she collected her things and went from the bar to the bus station.

-

It was two weeks.  Two weeks of sex she wasn’t that into, dreams about caucuses and primaries and rallies.  Two weeks of thinking about Josh’s dimples and then promptly dismissing those thoughts, in a constant cycle.  Watching the news, reading the paper, scouring for details about the campaign and the primaries.  Reading Bartlet's autobiography three - okay, four - times, just to kill time.

C.J. called her.

“Donna, are you sure about this?”

Donna had told her about him, how things had been before.

“He’s changed,” Donna insisted.  C.J. grunted. 

“They don’t change, Donna.  They get older, but a freeloader is a freeloader.  Come back here, if Josh won’t hire you back I will.”

Donna smiled, and thanked her, but she was home to stay.  Really she was.

It was that same night that Donna was in the car accident.  The same night _he_ stopped for beers on the way to the hospital.

As soon as the doctor cleared her to walk, Donna got right back on the bus, and this time, she left the daisies (daisies! She loathed daisies) he’d brought to the hospital, clearly purchased at 7-11, on his doorstep, stamped on to make it clear how she felt.

Josh looked up when she came back, and asked about messages.  Just like that, no questions, no lectures.

C.J. said it was because Josh had been completely lost without her.  Going by the backed-up phone messages and the state of his clothing, Donna had to believe that was the truth.

-

Josh didn't ask questions, and that was great, it was exactly how Donna wanted it.  He had always called _him_ Dr. Freeride, from the first time Donna explained about him, and it was embarrassing that she went back.  She hated that Josh knew why, and she wanted him to say absolutely nothing about it.

But it was, in a lot of ways, more meaningful that C.J. didn’t ask questions.  Instead, she pointedly waited for Donna to speak.

And Donna told her everything.  About the accident, the daisies, the beer, the way he still expected a blow job if she had a headache and how he’d laughed about the idea that Donna wanted to see if she had a career waiting for her in politics.  C.J. seethed but said nothing until Donna was done.

But when she was, C.J. stood up and went to her jewelry case.  She pulled out a pair of earrings.

They weren’t expensive, or old.  C.J. handed them to Donna.

“This was the first pair of earrings I bought when I first went to work with EMILY’s List. I thought….well, I thought back then, I’d made it.  And I did, in some ways.  It was where I had to start to get where I am.  I bought these earrings to remind me how everyone said it was a dumb career choice, I wouldn’t get anywhere, I was wasting my degree.  I bought these because all of that was bullshit.”

Donna stared at the earrings in her hand.

“Earrings can do all that, huh?” she quipped, a bit uncomfortable.

“Yeah, they can,” said C.J.  She ducked to look Donna in the eye.  “If you want to do this, Donna Moss, I’ll help you however I can.  We need more women – the country needs more women.  But more than that, more than I want to see familiar, feminine faces in the halls of the West Wing when we get there, I want to see people who have drive, ambition, and smarts.  You’re one of those people, Donna.  You deserve the chance to see where all of that can take you.”

Donna grinned, and folded her fingers around the gift.

“But one thing – don’t tell Toby I said ‘the west wing’ and ‘when we get there.’  He has a thing about going outside to spit and I’m not doing that.”

They laughed, and began to talk about other things.

-

 

**Author's Note:**

> “The size of your dreams must always exceed your current capacity to achieve them. If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.”—Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia
> 
> I feel like C.J. has that on a plaque somewhere. Or, she should.


End file.
